


Every Day the Same Dream

by Cottonstones



Category: Panic At The Disco, Young Veins
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-22
Updated: 2012-06-22
Packaged: 2017-11-08 07:02:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/440456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cottonstones/pseuds/Cottonstones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brendon's life is average. Every day feels like a cycle he'll never break and a dream he'll never wake up from.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Day the Same Dream

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely based off of [the game of the same name](http://www.molleindustria.org/everydaythesamedream/everydaythesamedream.html) by [Molleindustria](http://www.molleindustria.org/).

Brendon wakes up every day to go to a job he despises, one that he got into after the two-year stint in community college that lead to a failed career as a hairdresser but a success at drowning him in debt, between student loans and a bankrupted salon that caught fire just a year after Brendon opened it. Spencer got him the job in the office. “It’s quiet,” Spencer had said back then, smiling as he watched Brendon straighten his tie. “But it’s work.”

Brendon gets dressed, the same boring suits stacked in his closet, the same pressed shirts that smell like the same laundry detergent that he’s been buying for three years now. The only literal bright spot in Brendon’s wardrobe are his bowties, his normal ties, too. He buys fairly ugly ones, forest green with little owls on them or black with splotches of purple. It’s something … it’s different.

Brendon goes out into the kitchen and Sarah is standing at the stove, the TV on too loud, too bright, noisy for no real purpose. It’s the same morning talk show that Sarah enjoys listening to as she cooks, the same news anchors, plastic-faced and worn down from when they started hosting the show. Brendon passes by the TV, his stomach growling, and Sarah is cooking, but he’s late already, and he resigns himself to buying something cheap and greasy on the road.

“Your tie is crooked,” Sarah says, never looking up from the skillet where the bacon is burning, curling in on itself. Brendon touches at his tie. He remembers post-wedding, post-honeymoon, every day, Sarah would straighten his tie and then kiss him, and they’d laugh, and at least Brendon would have a reason to look forward to coming home at night. Brendon –briefcase in hand – leans in to give Sarah a kiss. She pulls back, Brendon’s mouth meeting air instead of warm, sweet-smelling skin.

“You’re running late, honey,” she says. She sounds tired, bored. They don’t have children, not for lack of previously trying, but somewhere, something is wrong, wires crossed, and no, they don’t have children. Sarah spends her days at home watching TV and cooking dinner and pressing Brendon’s shirts and ironing his slacks. He remembers meeting her at the salon – the only real good thing to come out of that venture, or at least that’s what Brendon used to believe – she’d been brighter, happier, smiled more. Now neither of them are happy, working at jobs they hate, married to people they no longer sleep with.

Brendon takes the elevator down to the parking garage. Ryan is in the elevator, dressed like he stepped out of a time machine and into the wrong decade (there’s another man in the building who dresses the same way, just ten years prior to Ryan’s sixties), and Ryan smiles a little. Brendon doesn’t know where he works or what he does, but he envies the easy smile that meets Ryan’s mouth.

“Good morning,” Brendon says, recycled lines to fit his recycled life.

“Morning,” Ryan says and then he messes with a brown leather cuff on his wrist and says, “You know you can be a different person if you try hard enough?”

Brendon gaps and scoffs and raises a questionable eyebrow at Ryan. Before he can question what planet Ryan gleaned this information from, the elevator dings and Brendon steps out into the cool expanse of the garage. He gets in his car – there are already three just like it parked two spaces down – and he drives the same path to work that he’s taken every day for two years. Brendon rolls the windows down in his car; it’s nice, but it’s windy out, and the smell of fresh manure from the farm lining the road that Brendon takes is catching in the breeze and wafting thick and noxious into the car. Brendon sighs, rolling his windows up and cursing the cows grazing in the fields.

He gets to work in fifteen minutes, only after deciding not to stop for anything to eat. If he’s lucky, then it’s someone’s birthday, or maybe Dallon brought some donuts in again. If he’s not lucky, well, then he scrapes up enough change from his desk and buys cheap snacks out of the vending machine in the kitchen area.

Brendon’s boss, Mr. Hall, is standing out in the hallway leading to Brendon’s work area. Mr. Hall is hulking and angry and frowning at Brendon. “You’re late, Urie!” Mr. Hall snaps. He might not even be angry at Brendon. Maybe he had a bad morning, maybe he had a fight with his wife, or a bad meeting, or one of the investors in their company decided to back out at the last minute. He might not be mad at Brendon, but he takes it out on Brendon. “Get to your cubicle!” Mr. Hall practically growls, and Brendon trudges along, he won’t argue. He touches his tie and walks past the poster board with the month’s fiscal income tacked to the wall. The insides of the office all look the same. Everyone has their cubicle, with pictures of their families tacked up on the inside, comic strips, pets, memories, dreams that died.

Everyone is typing away at their computers, clicking on their mouse, pretending to work until they can actually go home and sleep until the next day where they play on Facebook until five o’clock.

Brendon passes Dallon’s desk. Dallon is on the phone; it’s no doubt a sales call, or maybe it’s Breezy set on telling Dallon that he should be home with her, helping her care for their children while she’s come down with the flu. It’s funny – Brendon knows more about Dallon’s wife than he does his own. Dallon has a bright pink box of donuts sitting on his desk next to the picture of his children and an even older photo of Dallon holding a guitar. Dallon looks up at Brendon, smiling and nodding, and Brendon smiles back as best he can before popping the box open to get a donut. All the good ones are gone, so Brendon settles for a jelly-filled calorie bomb.

Brendon eats his donut as he walks to his desk. He passes by legions of co-workers, some he knows and some he doesn’t. Spencer works in the cubicle directly in front of Brendon’s, and this guy – Jon, Brendon thinks his name is – works right across from Brendon on the right.

Today, there’s a note on Brendon’s keyboard. ‘Urie, had to borrow your stapler, come get it when you get here – Jon Walker.’ Brendon sets his briefcase on his desk and starts up his computer, weighing the merits of actually talking with a co-worker or pretending to work until the sun sinks to the west side of the building. Brendon goes to get his stapler in the end.

Jon is writing something down, but he looks up with a smile as Brendon approaches. Brendon doesn’t think Jon looks like he belongs here. Brendon thinks Jon looks like he should be lying in a meadow somewhere, chewing pieces of grass, maybe hanging out with the cow that Brendon spotted on the way into work.

“Glad you got my note,” Jon says. He picks up Brendon’s stapler, the one with the little B.U. written on it in white-out. Brendon purses his lips and laughs a little awkwardly, reaching for the stapler. He sees the picture then – it’s a picture of Ryan, the same guy that Brendon’s been riding in an elevator with every morning for two years, and Jon together, touching – not like friends touch, but like people in love touch. Jon notices Brendon looking and he laughs, his smile warmer, face brighter. “That’s my fiancé,” Jon says, tapping the frame of the picture with a fingertip. “We’re getting married in the fall.”

Does Jon live in his building? Does one of Brendon’s co-workers live in Brendon’s building and Brendon takes the elevator with his weirdo fiancé and Brendon never knew all this time?

“Congratulations,” Brendon says, and Jon beams. “Thanks for the stapler,” Brendon adds as he heads back to his desk.

When Brendon sits back down at his desk, Spencer decides to show up, rolling in his chair and stopping next to Brendon. “Good morning, Brendon. Did you have a good weekend?”

Brendon shrugs. “Sat at home and watched TV.”

“Oh. How’s the missus?” Spencer tries again. He always wants small talk. He’s a big fan of small talk. Brendon is a big fan of sleeping under his desk until life makes sense again.

“I think Jon lives in my building. Isn’t that weird?” Brendon asks.

Spencer shrugs. “Not that weird. It’s a little city.”

“I’ve been here two years and I don’t really know anyone. What a waste of time.”

Spencer hums. “Depends on how you look at it.”

Spencer goes back to work when Brendon stays quiet too long. Brendon opens up some documents and then an internet window and watches porn minimized in the corner for two hours, works a little, and then checks his email. On his own desk is a picture of himself and Sarah from when they were happier, before they were married, and he feels a little like telling Jon not to go through with it. ‘Does he want to end up like Brendon? Stop while you’re ahead, Walker.’ But he says nothing. He feels like telling them all what he really thinks, how truly unfulfilled he is with his life and how every day feels like a dream that never fucking ends.

Tonight, Brendon will drive home and he’ll eat the dinner that Sarah prepared and he’ll watch bad TV, and he’ll take a shower and go to bed and he won’t fuck Sarah because they don’t do that anymore. And in the morning he’ll wake up – probably late for no real reason because Brendon gets sleep – and he won’t fuck Sarah yet again and he’ll take the elevator with Ryan and drive to work through cow shit and he’ll get yelled at by Zack and Jon will take his stapler and he’ll never get the right kind of donut from Dallon and Spencer will make small talk. It’ll happen because it always happens. It’s been happening every day for two years.

Brendon feels panicky. He feels like he can’t breathe, and that’s his reasoning for going out on to the roof. The wind pushes at Brendon, feeling like a guiding hand, an idea that’s planted itself two years ago and won’t leave him alone, flourishing now like a tree, rooted through his whole body. Brendon steps to the edge of the roof, fifty floors up and the city is so small. Brendon is small. Everything is small.

“I can be a different person if I try hard enough,” Brendon says and he nods, suddenly so certain that the only way to break the cycle and be free is this way. Brendon steps on the ledge and he takes huge gasping gulps of air and, you know, he’s not even afraid. He’s excited about something for the first time in months. Brendon shifts on the ledge, tips his weight and leaps out into the air, closes his eyes as he crashes to the ground.

Brendon wakes up in a different bed, in a different house. It’s warm and sunny and he has a dog sleeping near his head. He can hear someone talking from outside the bedroom. Not Sarah, definitely a man, a man who sounds suspiciously like Spencer. Brendon feels different – he is different. There’s no suits, no wedding ring, no briefcase in sight. Brendon is different.

Brendon is free.


End file.
